Tough and Self-Healing Recycled Polyurethanes with Tunable Fluorescence by Chain Aggregation
writer：Pengyu Liu, Xiaochuan Ren, Xiaoyan Qiu, Xin Yang, Yuyan Wang, and Xinxing Zhang*
keywords：Self-Healing，Recycled Polyurethanes，Tunable Fluorescence
source：期刊
Issue time：2025年
Recycling of thermoset polyurethanes (PUs) has aroused wide-ranging
concerns. However, degraded thermoset PUs face great challenges in effectively
rebuilding the network for multifunctional upgradation due to random chain breakage.
Herein, we incorporate anionically polymerized poly(maleimide) (PM) into the
reconfigured PU network to achieve improved mechanical and self-healing properties,
and tunable emission of the recycled PU by chain aggregation. The aggregation of PM
or degraded PU fragments via hydrogen bonding interactions forms three main cluster
luminophores, of which the changing relative proportion gives rise to tunable emission
(from blue to green). Meanwhile, hydrogen bonding interactions between the PM and
PU chains serve as sacrificial bonds and dynamic bonds to enhance the mechanical
properties (61.7 MJ/m3, increased by 52 times) and self-healing abilities (86.6%),
respectively. The design of chain aggregation opens up a new perspective for the
multifunctional upgradation of recycled PU and greatly facilitates the value-added
utilization of waste thermoset PUs.